The crowd experience at Rupp Arena has long been a topic of interest among Kentucky Wildcats basketball fans.
As a blue-blood college basketball program with arguably the best fan base in the sport and an arena with a capacity of around 20,000, Rupp Arena should be one of the rowdiest, most intimidating environments in all of college basketball.
There have been stories over the last several years of people in the lower arena being told to sit down during the game when standing up to cheer, but such an incident that reportedly happened during the Kentucky-Louisville game has created a lot of buzz on the internet.
A video posted on Twitter by the account @SadKentucky seems to show a police officer walking down to an individual in the lower arena who was standing up and telling him to sit down.
Threatening arrest seems like a drastic action to take for standing during a basketball game. However, it is indicative of how much of an issue this is at Rupp Arena.
There are two sides to this issue. On one hand, you can make the argument that fans have the right to stand and cheer for their team. It’s part of the home-court advantage, and we see this take place at other schools across the country. The argument is that fans paid to come to the game and cheer on their team, and they should be able to do so.
On the other hand, there are a lot of fans at Rupp Arena who are not able to stand for long periods of time during a game, for whatever reason. There are areas of the arena where someone standing in front of them can impede being able to see the game. Those concerns are valid.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, most folks would agree threatening arrest seems like a bit of an overstep.
